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North Korea has purged 30 officials involved in talks with South Korean negotiators, a news report said Friday.
“It has been confirmed that 10 people have been executed by firing and another 20 by manipulated traffic accidents,” the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper quoted a South Korean government official as saying. “Because the North now has no negotiators to talk with the South, inter-Korean relations will change drastically.”
The bilateral relations between the North and South have long since been strained since the 2010 sinking of a South Korean Navy vessel by the North as well as the North's artillery firing on Yeonpyeong Island late last year.
Analysts said that the purges clearly demonstrate the fragile state of the North's communist regime. “This instability is born from the escalating power struggle between hardliners and proponents of dialogue while the succession of the heir Kim Jong-un continues,” says a North Korea analyst.
South Korea is attempting to initiate dialogue with the North but faces many obstacles due to internal problems in the Communist nation. Experts warn that the North may instigate a larger-scale aggression later this year, such as a nuclear test or missile firing.
“PyeongChang, the host of the 2018 Winter Olympics, is near the border of the Korean Peninsula. It is imperative that inter-Korean relations are resolved,” stated Rep. Hong Joon-pyo, chairman of the governing Grand National Party, at the Korea Press Center in central Seoul, July 14.
However, Hong said that the North Korean political situation is too complex to be solved before inter-Korean relations can be improved.
The writer is a Korea Times intern. yoonjh@student.cis.edu.hk
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